The MediMorphosis
by Lanie Kay-Aleese
Summary: Gregory House wakes up one morning to the discovery that he is a giant pest. Homage to Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis.


Disclaimer: I own nothing but my House DVD box sets and my copy of Kafka's "Metamorphosis".

**The Medi-morphosis**

**by Lanie Kay-Aleese**

"Don't come in."

House heard Wilson sigh from the hallway connecting to his bedroom. "House, you can't honestly think you can play hooky today. I thought you would be eager to find out about any developments in the case," he said.

"Later," House coughed. He looked around his room and wondered if he could possibly fit underneath the sofa and hide there. All that mattered was Wilson not seeing him.

Maybe if he waited long enough, his problem would go away. But until then...

If only he could make his legs move well enough to turn himself over.

It took a few minutes. It felt like hours and certainly his body burnt from the exertion, as if he'd been running for days without stopping, but in reality he had done little more than flip himself onto the ground. By now, Wilson had returned - House guessed he was in the middle of fixing his tie outside the door.

"House, I'm going to leave," warned Wilson.

It was an empty threat, but that didn't mean it would keep Wilson from entering without House's permission.

House cursed himself for his habit of leaving his bedroom door unlocked.

How was he to know that something like this could happen?

Wilson kept on talking to him all the while, and House vainly tried to adjust his eyes enough to see a place to hide. It seemed impossible. He was doomed. He was damned. He was -

"That's it, House, I'm coming in."

- He was slamming his back against the wall, hoping it would swallow him up.

The door swung open and caused Wilson to stagger forward as the light of the living room clashed with the shadows of House's solitary confines.

It was to Wilson's great befuddlement that Gregory House wasn't anywhere in sight.

"House?" asked Wilson, tenuous. "Are you up?"

"Yeah, working on it," said House from deep within the room. Wilson peered forward and could just make out a shadowy silhouette. House, he presumed; and he squinted.

"...Your leg hurting?" asked Wilson.

House recognized it as Wilson's maternal instincts flaring up; and this was no time for that, because even if his leg was hurting, there was no way that Wilson would be able to help. There wasn't Vicodin for this.

"Don't come in," said House, sharply. He lurched himself out of Wilson's view and behind the veil of a dark corner. "Just go to work and I'll be there later."

Wilson stepped forward.

"You've got to wake up, you're going to be late already-"

He moved to flick the light switch to 'on'.

"Get out! I told you, GET OUT-" yelled House.

But it wasn't fast enough.

The lights flooded through the room, and a voice cried out in shock, pain, and something undefinable.

It took House a full moment before he realized that the cry had come from _him_.

"Oh my god!" Wilson said at last. And there was no way that House could say that it was anything other than horror written across his face.

"I told you not to look, damnit!" House spat, turning awkwardly. He tried to collect his breathing, to keep himself from going into any stages of panic, because it was obvious that at this point Wilson wasn't going to be hanging around there anmore, Wilson was sickened by him.

And Wilson was all he had.

How was he to explain himself? How could he even think that Wilson could possibly understand that he was still himself, in a way?

"House-" Wilson began, stepping back out of the room. The rejection stang like his leg.

"- Don't say anything! I'm a fucking roach, I know!"

And it was the strangest thing, because Wilson stopped. And then, leaning against the doorframe, his expression completely changed, he said simply, "Well, of course you are."

It had barely sunk in as House realized that Wilson was laughing. Out of nowhere, apples had appeared in his hands, and he threw them at House's hideous, grotesque form.

Cursing, House tried to limp away, but his leg flared up, and it was killing him, and it slowed him down enough that even with Wilson's terrible aim, an apple hit him right in the center of his disgusting, brown, exo-skeleton and perhaps the place where his heart was supposed to be, and that was it.

That was precisely where it ended.

And, just like every morning since the dreams began, Gregory House woke up to the discovery that he was a giant pest.


End file.
